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These have always been an enormous waste of time from my perspective. They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time

These have always been an enormous waste of time from my perspective. They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time. Anything process-wise should be handled through scrum. Anything personal can be handled with ad-hoc 1-on-1 meetings as needed, but should be pretty rare. 1-on-1s for process really do harm to transparency and accountability. If I had a nickel for every time I've been given tasks or been "re-oriented" in a 1-on-1, outside of scheduled work...

codingdave 4y ago
> ad-hoc 1-on-1 meetings as needed, but should be pretty rare. That is exactly why ongoing meetings are important. If you only do rare ad-hoc meetings, you have established a relationship where you don't talk to your boss. Everything runs through processes, everything seems fine, you guys don't talk... until one day you need a talk and it is a big change to the status quo. If you don't get value from regular 1:1s, fine - make them a 30 second pit stop of, "Everything is still fine, talk to you in 2 weeks". But you really should have that ongoing quick check so that you have an established point in time to change your answer and say, "We need to talk about X."
pnt12 4y ago
With ad-hoc meetings, people can be overly cautious: "maybe this is not that important", "maybe my manager is busy". With periodic 1:1s, the manager has already allocated time to listen to you, so it's easier to talk about what's going on: sometimes it's important stuff, others not that much, but there's communication. However, it can get bad if people wait for the 1:1s to address important which should be taken care of before.
Invictus0 4y ago
DO you consider yourself an introvert by any chance?
- mshake2 4y ago
  Yes but I don't go to work to socialize with my manager. I go to make money for the business and me so that I can have a life outside of work.
- screamingninja 4y ago
  Note: introversion != lack of social skills Also: introversion != lack of motivation or overall perspective I personally doubt introversion has much to do with the parent comment. Several bad leaders over time can easily jade a person's perspective towards their leadership, ESPECIALLY if they end up discussing daily operations during their 1-on-1 instead of the big picture.
  - Invictus0 4y ago
    Introversion doesn't necessarily imply a lack of social skills, but in my experience, that is typically the case. We are also on HN, whose commenters are not exactly known for the social acumen.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
shortcake27 4y ago
I agree with this. I came to loathe my weekly 1-on-1s because I felt they were just interrupting my work with a 30 minute “So… how has your week been?” chat. I got zero value from them, hopefully my manager got something. In the past I had a manager ask me if I wanted to do them and I said no, so we stopped doing them and it was awesome.
ryanSrich 4y ago
> They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time. As a manager, I DESPISED doing 1v1s at my old company. We don't do them at my new company. It's an incredible waste of time. Create a culture that allows employees to come to you when THEY need to. If this isn't within the realm of possibility, at least make 1v1s optional for employees that just don't have anything to discuss every 1-2 weeks. Some people just like to do their jobs and get paid. As a manager, you should be able to see what your people are working on. If you have questions about it, ask them. But for the love of god, don't schedule a recurring meeting just so they can tell you things that are easily gleaned by reading a git commit.
- canadaduane 4y ago
  I laughed a bit when you wrote "1v1" because it made me think of a video game where you're matched with a suitably leveled enemy player. (I don't know how others pronounce "1:1" but I pronounce it "1 on 1").
  - OJFord 4y ago
    I read it as 'one to one', like a ratio. Also one person talking to one other. Interesting though, and now you say it I realise the submitter also wrote '1-on-1s'.
- 8note 4y ago
  The employee not thinking there's something to talk about doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about. A good people-person manager can get the employee to bring up things they otherwise wouldn't think of.
  - ryanSrich 4y ago
    What does this have to do with my comment? I never said don’t talk to your employees ever. A recurring 1v1 where you have to poke and prod information out of a subordinate is not constructive. If you have concerns, bring them up when they happen. No need to pull teeth every few weeks just to make yourself feel better as a manager.
massysett 4y ago
"They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time." As a manager it is critically important that I have a sense of what my staff is doing. New assignments come in all the time that require quick turnaround. I need to know who on my staff is available for such projects.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  As a manager how can you not know what your staff is doing at any given time? I've worked in some places where developers chose their own stories but we had morning standups to communicate what we were working on.
  - massysett 4y ago
    We don't have morning standups. Why is a 1:1 a waste of time, but a morning standup isn't?
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      Yeah morning standups are not great either TBH but more efficient than a manager trying to gatekeep and broker information via 1:1s with each developer.
      - massysett 4y ago
        So having a standup every single day is more efficient than meeting once a week with your manager? You'd rather have to take time out every single day to hear other people talk about stuff that may have no relevance to what you do, rather than meet with your manager once a week - a meeting that might take only a few minutes if there turns out to be little to discuss? OK, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.
        mshake2 4y ago
        The point of a stand is for the team to synchronize and raise potential issues. If the team is small, cross-functional, and working in the same area, it has a lot of value. You seem to be looking at this from the perspective of "what can I, the manager, get out of this" instead of "what can the team get out of this."
akerl_ 4y ago
As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue. If somebody has to block out an adhoc meeting to raise a concern, it feels like a bigger deal. That won’t stop all people or all issues, but it does set a higher bar and that means some conversations won’t clear it. My 1:1s are not all on the same cadence, and some of them end up spending more time on general rambling than others, but it means that there’s a known space where people who report to me know they have my time and can just bring up whatever. Notably, I do not use 1:1 time to ask tactical questions about projects that are ongoing, there’s other existing channels for project status tracking.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  Yeah. 1:1s should be a bit more like office hours. This is where you can deal with priory as individuals outside of a project. There’s nothing wrong with making it a bit of a high level status update, especially if your manager isn’t attending certain project meetings, but it should be more about resource management. Explain pain points, and that sort of thing. It can also be a place to drill down on topics that got brought up in the larger team meeting as well. When I run 1:1s I end up scheduling them for 45 minutes, but target them for ~25-30 minutes. The extra time is there for when we need to go long without forcing a hard stop too quickly.
- _puk 4y ago
  "As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue." Agree with this completely, and is something I always introduce straight away with my team. If someone stops me in the corridor / sends a slack to say "Jim's tapping drives me nuts" (as a lame example), then it's now a big thing. I have to stop what I'm doing to establish how much of a problem it actually is, and how soon I need to deal with the issue. It takes a lot to interrupt someone for something that potentially is a small, yet personally important thing, so people are less inclined to do it. If instead, at the end of a regular scheduled one on one, as we're winding down, at the inevitable "anything else" stage, someone mentions "oh, yeah, small thing, but Jim's tapping drives me nuts", then we can discuss and establish a path forward in an open environment. Invariably they feel listened to, we can decide a way to approach the issue, and it's far less dramatic.
ttGpN5Nde3pK 4y ago
So I think this may be true for most, but as someone with awful workplace anxiety from shitty workplaces in the past it helps me tremendously to have touchpoints to hear that I'm doing ok and that my manager doesn't have any critiques/etc. This probably isn't the norm, so I think a middle ground of giving people the option to 1v1 makes sense.
SoftTalker 4y ago
I agree. There is a place for 1:1 meetings as needed but a standing weekly 1:1 is a "management smell" in my experience.
- baq 4y ago
  Yes, when they don’t want to have 1:1 it means they don’t want to give me their time. That’s not managing, that’s coasting.
superfrank 4y ago
I'm a manager running two teams right now. The way I run my 1:1s I try and keep status updates out of them as much as possible. Like you said, "here's what I'm working on" type updates should be handled by Scrum. I still run 1:1s every two weeks with each one of my direct reports for a few reasons: - There are some people who just won't speak up or request an ad-hoc 1-on-1 if something is wrong. It's just a personality thing. I can use this time to ask them about things and try and get them to open up. I have two people on my team where the world could be on fire and if I asked them how things were going they'd say "fine". Direct 1:1 time with them is super valuable for me to dig in a bit. - Especially now that we're remote 1:1s allow for us to handle a lot of little things that aren't super important all at once. "I don't understand how to submit and expense report even though I read the documentation". It doesn't make sense to have a specific meeting for that since it's going to take 5 minutes, let's just tackle it in the 1:1. - As my team has gotten bigger, a lot of my information starts to come through the same few people. I rely heavily on my project leads for updates which means everything is filtered through them. 1:1s give me a chance to hear other people's opinions on things without them being filtered. - I use this time to discuss career and personal goals. "What do you want to work on next?", "Here's a plan to line you up for a promotion next year". - I'm never going to force to chit chat about our lives if they don't want to, but I have multiple people on my team who want to have some sort of connection to the people they work with. There are some people who half our 1:1 is talking about travel or sports. Honestly, my philosophy is our 1:1 is your (direct reports) time. You provide the agenda and you tell me what you need. If you want to cancel it every time, that's fine. If you want to spend 30 minutes talking about our weekends, that's also fine.
- mythhouse 4y ago
  > ask them about things and try and get them to open up. What kind of things do you ask them. wondering if you have some examples. Trying to get some ideas.
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    Do not ask. All you’ll get is “fine” or “alright”. You have to open up first. Share what you’re comfortable with sharing. If you don’t share and make yourself vulnerable first, they will never open up. You have lower the risk for them. Once you have established that rapport, then they’ll do it. Your report will mimic you based on how you run the meeting. It also has the advantage of making hard conversations easier.
tonnydourado 4y ago
I agree that process should be public, I disagree that personal 1-on-1s should be ad-hoc. The whole point is for feedback to be continuous, so if you're starting to fuck up, you get early warnings and a better chance of correcting course. That has been my experience, at least, I am somewhat of an acquired taste, personality wise, and often unwillingly unaware of my effect on others, or bad habits I might slip into. Having regular 1-on-1s gives manager opportunity to give me early feedback. It also gives me a regular chance to 1) ask for help with interpersonal things I struggle with and 2) get positive feedback, when I manage, to everyone's surprised, to not fuck things up. All of that depends hugely on the manager, of course. If your manager is using this time to check on your regular work, or give you tasks ... there might not be hope for this job. Maybe you can talk to them, maybe to their boss, but it smells like just a bad culture, that you're better of leaving than trying to fix.
monkeynotes 4y ago
> They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time This is a cynical view of 1:1 time. I've always felt like a 1:1 is a time to bond with my manager, and look out for my own needs so I can make the most of my career. Today I am a manager and I can hand on heart say I am at the service of the people I support. I am not telling them how to spend their time, I am not trying to know everything they are doing, I am there to listen, assist, and fill in organizational gaps to keep things moving and keep ICs unblocked. Engineers are smart people perfectly capable of outthinking me, they are relied on for keeping their own work on track but to ask for help (maybe in a 1:1!) when they need it. My work is done when everyone is happy and productive, 1:1s help me do my job and my job is to provide support, advice, consultation, and communication between the business and my team. I don't know how I could possibly make sure everyone has what they need, is working toward goals they care about, feel valued and heard, without regular 1:1s. If I were an IC and my manager didn't check in with me regularly I would not feel like I was part of something, managers help glue teams together because no one else on the team is going to do that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
  With a good boss, the 1:1 is a time to catch up with someone who is playing a different role in helping achieve the team's goals. With a bad boss, the 1:1 is a regular compulsory reminder of who is the boss, and gives the boss something to do.
baq 4y ago
You’ve had some terrible managers. 1:1 should be your time…
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pan69 4y ago
Your 1:1's shouldn't be about your work and progress on a project. It should be about "you" and how you feel about your position in the team, the things that are bugging you, etc. However, often, before you can have a meaningful conversation with your manager you need to have build some sort of relationship first. By having a scheduled based (e.g. every two weeks) 1:1's will allow you to create a report with your manager. You can talk about anything, doesn't have to be work, can be hobby etc. Try to find a common interest. Maybe you're both games or rock climbers. Whatever. The main point is that you create a relationship with your manager in which you feel that you can talk to this person. I have 1:1's with my team members and often we just talk about what we did on the weekend. It's not the objective to drag your personal life into your work environment but its to create a meaningful trust relationship. Once that is established you can have a meaningful conversation that could lean more towards your feelings. As a manager and/or team lead, one of the worst things is to have an unhappy person on your team. Edit: PS, forgot to add. Its best that the manager you have 1:1's with is not a person who you work with on a day to day basis. I.e. not your project/team lead e.g. but someone unrelated to your daily efforts.
simonsarris 4y ago
I am reminded of: > One story has it that when Seymour Cray was asked by management to provide detailed one-year and five-year plans for his next machine, he simply wrote, "Five-year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One year goal: One-fifth of the above." And another time, when expected to write a multi-page detailed status report for the company executives, Cray's two sentence report read: "Activity is progressing satisfactorily as outlined under the June plan. There have been no significant changes or deviations from the June plan."
cdkmoose 4y ago
>They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time A good manager should already know what the team is doing. And that shouldn't be the point of the 1-1. As a manager I believe part of my job is to run interference for my team. It's better for me to be in a bunch of meetings than my team. But this also means I have a potentially crowded schedule. I have recurring bi-weekly 1-1s with each of my team members so they know that they are important as an individual and that I am guaranteeing them time with me every two weeks. This time is for them and about them. If we don't have anything to discuss we don't mee or sometimes it's only 5 minutes. But they know w that the time si there for them. I use these meetings to see how they are doing, not what they are doing. How are you and your spouse doing with the new baby? How is your child's college search going? I think it's important to have an idea of where they are as a person to help understand how they are doing at work and how I might help make things better.
jacurtis 4y ago
Its sad, but it sounds like you have had bad managers. I myself am a mid-level manager. I have 1x1s with my employees. I also have 1x1 with my manager (the CTO). I personally look forward to my 1x1 with my manager, the CTO, each week. I find them very useful. Without them we always meet in the context of other projects and often around other people. Having dedicated time to talk one-on-one is very nice. I know that my employees enjoy one-on-ones with me, because by default I generally only schedule them biweekly (every-other-week). But many of my employees go over on time each meeting and many of them request meeting weekly. We discuss goals, difficulties, challenges, successes, and often even personal things (only when provoked by the employee, I never ask personal questions or personal topics myself). The 1 on 1 meetings are the best true barometer for how an employee is doing. Some employees might be overwhelmed, but don't show it in other meetings. 1 on 1 meetings give me an idea for how they are truly feeling. I might even invite them for time off (we have unlimited PTO) when hearing things in 1x1s. A bad manager might make 1x1s worthless. If that's the case you should look at other teams or companies. Life is too short to work under bad managers.
- zogomoox 4y ago
  You make it sound like bad managers are rare. Changing teams or companies does not guarantee finding a good manager.

codingdave 4y ago

> ad-hoc 1-on-1 meetings as needed, but should be pretty rare. That is exactly why ongoing meetings are important. If you only do rare ad-hoc meetings, you have established a relationship where you don't talk to your boss. Everything runs through processes, everything seems fine, you guys don't talk... until one day you need a talk and it is a big change to the status quo. If you don't get value from regular 1:1s, fine - make them a 30 second pit stop of, "Everything is still fine, talk to you in 2 weeks". But you really should have that ongoing quick check so that you have an established point in time to change your answer and say, "We need to talk about X."

pnt12 4y ago

With ad-hoc meetings, people can be overly cautious: "maybe this is not that important", "maybe my manager is busy". With periodic 1:1s, the manager has already allocated time to listen to you, so it's easier to talk about what's going on: sometimes it's important stuff, others not that much, but there's communication. However, it can get bad if people wait for the 1:1s to address important which should be taken care of before.

Invictus0 4y ago

DO you consider yourself an introvert by any chance?

mshake2 4y ago
Yes but I don't go to work to socialize with my manager. I go to make money for the business and me so that I can have a life outside of work.
screamingninja 4y ago
Note: introversion != lack of social skills Also: introversion != lack of motivation or overall perspective I personally doubt introversion has much to do with the parent comment. Several bad leaders over time can easily jade a person's perspective towards their leadership, ESPECIALLY if they end up discussing daily operations during their 1-on-1 instead of the big picture.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  Introversion doesn't necessarily imply a lack of social skills, but in my experience, that is typically the case. We are also on HN, whose commenters are not exactly known for the social acumen.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

shortcake27 4y ago

I agree with this. I came to loathe my weekly 1-on-1s because I felt they were just interrupting my work with a 30 minute “So… how has your week been?” chat. I got zero value from them, hopefully my manager got something. In the past I had a manager ask me if I wanted to do them and I said no, so we stopped doing them and it was awesome.

ryanSrich 4y ago

> They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time. As a manager, I DESPISED doing 1v1s at my old company. We don't do them at my new company. It's an incredible waste of time. Create a culture that allows employees to come to you when THEY need to. If this isn't within the realm of possibility, at least make 1v1s optional for employees that just don't have anything to discuss every 1-2 weeks. Some people just like to do their jobs and get paid. As a manager, you should be able to see what your people are working on. If you have questions about it, ask them. But for the love of god, don't schedule a recurring meeting just so they can tell you things that are easily gleaned by reading a git commit.

canadaduane 4y ago
I laughed a bit when you wrote "1v1" because it made me think of a video game where you're matched with a suitably leveled enemy player. (I don't know how others pronounce "1:1" but I pronounce it "1 on 1").
- OJFord 4y ago
  I read it as 'one to one', like a ratio. Also one person talking to one other. Interesting though, and now you say it I realise the submitter also wrote '1-on-1s'.
8note 4y ago
The employee not thinking there's something to talk about doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about. A good people-person manager can get the employee to bring up things they otherwise wouldn't think of.
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  What does this have to do with my comment? I never said don’t talk to your employees ever. A recurring 1v1 where you have to poke and prod information out of a subordinate is not constructive. If you have concerns, bring them up when they happen. No need to pull teeth every few weeks just to make yourself feel better as a manager.

massysett 4y ago

"They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time." As a manager it is critically important that I have a sense of what my staff is doing. New assignments come in all the time that require quick turnaround. I need to know who on my staff is available for such projects.

SoftTalker 4y ago
As a manager how can you not know what your staff is doing at any given time? I've worked in some places where developers chose their own stories but we had morning standups to communicate what we were working on.
- massysett 4y ago
  We don't have morning standups. Why is a 1:1 a waste of time, but a morning standup isn't?
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yeah morning standups are not great either TBH but more efficient than a manager trying to gatekeep and broker information via 1:1s with each developer.
    - massysett 4y ago
      So having a standup every single day is more efficient than meeting once a week with your manager? You'd rather have to take time out every single day to hear other people talk about stuff that may have no relevance to what you do, rather than meet with your manager once a week - a meeting that might take only a few minutes if there turns out to be little to discuss? OK, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.
      - mshake2 4y ago
        The point of a stand is for the team to synchronize and raise potential issues. If the team is small, cross-functional, and working in the same area, it has a lot of value. You seem to be looking at this from the perspective of "what can I, the manager, get out of this" instead of "what can the team get out of this."

akerl_ 4y ago

As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue. If somebody has to block out an adhoc meeting to raise a concern, it feels like a bigger deal. That won’t stop all people or all issues, but it does set a higher bar and that means some conversations won’t clear it. My 1:1s are not all on the same cadence, and some of them end up spending more time on general rambling than others, but it means that there’s a known space where people who report to me know they have my time and can just bring up whatever. Notably, I do not use 1:1 time to ask tactical questions about projects that are ongoing, there’s other existing channels for project status tracking.

jonathankoren 4y ago
Yeah. 1:1s should be a bit more like office hours. This is where you can deal with priory as individuals outside of a project. There’s nothing wrong with making it a bit of a high level status update, especially if your manager isn’t attending certain project meetings, but it should be more about resource management. Explain pain points, and that sort of thing. It can also be a place to drill down on topics that got brought up in the larger team meeting as well. When I run 1:1s I end up scheduling them for 45 minutes, but target them for ~25-30 minutes. The extra time is there for when we need to go long without forcing a hard stop too quickly.
_puk 4y ago
"As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue." Agree with this completely, and is something I always introduce straight away with my team. If someone stops me in the corridor / sends a slack to say "Jim's tapping drives me nuts" (as a lame example), then it's now a big thing. I have to stop what I'm doing to establish how much of a problem it actually is, and how soon I need to deal with the issue. It takes a lot to interrupt someone for something that potentially is a small, yet personally important thing, so people are less inclined to do it. If instead, at the end of a regular scheduled one on one, as we're winding down, at the inevitable "anything else" stage, someone mentions "oh, yeah, small thing, but Jim's tapping drives me nuts", then we can discuss and establish a path forward in an open environment. Invariably they feel listened to, we can decide a way to approach the issue, and it's far less dramatic.

ttGpN5Nde3pK 4y ago

So I think this may be true for most, but as someone with awful workplace anxiety from shitty workplaces in the past it helps me tremendously to have touchpoints to hear that I'm doing ok and that my manager doesn't have any critiques/etc. This probably isn't the norm, so I think a middle ground of giving people the option to 1v1 makes sense.

SoftTalker 4y ago

I agree. There is a place for 1:1 meetings as needed but a standing weekly 1:1 is a "management smell" in my experience.

baq 4y ago
Yes, when they don’t want to have 1:1 it means they don’t want to give me their time. That’s not managing, that’s coasting.

superfrank 4y ago

I'm a manager running two teams right now. The way I run my 1:1s I try and keep status updates out of them as much as possible. Like you said, "here's what I'm working on" type updates should be handled by Scrum. I still run 1:1s every two weeks with each one of my direct reports for a few reasons: - There are some people who just won't speak up or request an ad-hoc 1-on-1 if something is wrong. It's just a personality thing. I can use this time to ask them about things and try and get them to open up. I have two people on my team where the world could be on fire and if I asked them how things were going they'd say "fine". Direct 1:1 time with them is super valuable for me to dig in a bit. - Especially now that we're remote 1:1s allow for us to handle a lot of little things that aren't super important all at once. "I don't understand how to submit and expense report even though I read the documentation". It doesn't make sense to have a specific meeting for that since it's going to take 5 minutes, let's just tackle it in the 1:1. - As my team has gotten bigger, a lot of my information starts to come through the same few people. I rely heavily on my project leads for updates which means everything is filtered through them. 1:1s give me a chance to hear other people's opinions on things without them being filtered. - I use this time to discuss career and personal goals. "What do you want to work on next?", "Here's a plan to line you up for a promotion next year". - I'm never going to force to chit chat about our lives if they don't want to, but I have multiple people on my team who want to have some sort of connection to the people they work with. There are some people who half our 1:1 is talking about travel or sports. Honestly, my philosophy is our 1:1 is your (direct reports) time. You provide the agenda and you tell me what you need. If you want to cancel it every time, that's fine. If you want to spend 30 minutes talking about our weekends, that's also fine.

mythhouse 4y ago
> ask them about things and try and get them to open up. What kind of things do you ask them. wondering if you have some examples. Trying to get some ideas.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  Do not ask. All you’ll get is “fine” or “alright”. You have to open up first. Share what you’re comfortable with sharing. If you don’t share and make yourself vulnerable first, they will never open up. You have lower the risk for them. Once you have established that rapport, then they’ll do it. Your report will mimic you based on how you run the meeting. It also has the advantage of making hard conversations easier.

tonnydourado 4y ago

I agree that process should be public, I disagree that personal 1-on-1s should be ad-hoc. The whole point is for feedback to be continuous, so if you're starting to fuck up, you get early warnings and a better chance of correcting course. That has been my experience, at least, I am somewhat of an acquired taste, personality wise, and often unwillingly unaware of my effect on others, or bad habits I might slip into. Having regular 1-on-1s gives manager opportunity to give me early feedback. It also gives me a regular chance to 1) ask for help with interpersonal things I struggle with and 2) get positive feedback, when I manage, to everyone's surprised, to not fuck things up. All of that depends hugely on the manager, of course. If your manager is using this time to check on your regular work, or give you tasks ... there might not be hope for this job. Maybe you can talk to them, maybe to their boss, but it smells like just a bad culture, that you're better of leaving than trying to fix.

monkeynotes 4y ago

> They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time This is a cynical view of 1:1 time. I've always felt like a 1:1 is a time to bond with my manager, and look out for my own needs so I can make the most of my career. Today I am a manager and I can hand on heart say I am at the service of the people I support. I am not telling them how to spend their time, I am not trying to know everything they are doing, I am there to listen, assist, and fill in organizational gaps to keep things moving and keep ICs unblocked. Engineers are smart people perfectly capable of outthinking me, they are relied on for keeping their own work on track but to ask for help (maybe in a 1:1!) when they need it. My work is done when everyone is happy and productive, 1:1s help me do my job and my job is to provide support, advice, consultation, and communication between the business and my team. I don't know how I could possibly make sure everyone has what they need, is working toward goals they care about, feel valued and heard, without regular 1:1s. If I were an IC and my manager didn't check in with me regularly I would not feel like I was part of something, managers help glue teams together because no one else on the team is going to do that.

deleted 4y ago
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MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
With a good boss, the 1:1 is a time to catch up with someone who is playing a different role in helping achieve the team's goals. With a bad boss, the 1:1 is a regular compulsory reminder of who is the boss, and gives the boss something to do.

baq 4y ago

You’ve had some terrible managers. 1:1 should be your time…

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pan69 4y ago

Your 1:1's shouldn't be about your work and progress on a project. It should be about "you" and how you feel about your position in the team, the things that are bugging you, etc. However, often, before you can have a meaningful conversation with your manager you need to have build some sort of relationship first. By having a scheduled based (e.g. every two weeks) 1:1's will allow you to create a report with your manager. You can talk about anything, doesn't have to be work, can be hobby etc. Try to find a common interest. Maybe you're both games or rock climbers. Whatever. The main point is that you create a relationship with your manager in which you feel that you can talk to this person. I have 1:1's with my team members and often we just talk about what we did on the weekend. It's not the objective to drag your personal life into your work environment but its to create a meaningful trust relationship. Once that is established you can have a meaningful conversation that could lean more towards your feelings. As a manager and/or team lead, one of the worst things is to have an unhappy person on your team. Edit: PS, forgot to add. Its best that the manager you have 1:1's with is not a person who you work with on a day to day basis. I.e. not your project/team lead e.g. but someone unrelated to your daily efforts.

simonsarris 4y ago

I am reminded of: > One story has it that when Seymour Cray was asked by management to provide detailed one-year and five-year plans for his next machine, he simply wrote, "Five-year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One year goal: One-fifth of the above." And another time, when expected to write a multi-page detailed status report for the company executives, Cray's two sentence report read: "Activity is progressing satisfactorily as outlined under the June plan. There have been no significant changes or deviations from the June plan."

cdkmoose 4y ago

>They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time A good manager should already know what the team is doing. And that shouldn't be the point of the 1-1. As a manager I believe part of my job is to run interference for my team. It's better for me to be in a bunch of meetings than my team. But this also means I have a potentially crowded schedule. I have recurring bi-weekly 1-1s with each of my team members so they know that they are important as an individual and that I am guaranteeing them time with me every two weeks. This time is for them and about them. If we don't have anything to discuss we don't mee or sometimes it's only 5 minutes. But they know w that the time si there for them. I use these meetings to see how they are doing, not what they are doing. How are you and your spouse doing with the new baby? How is your child's college search going? I think it's important to have an idea of where they are as a person to help understand how they are doing at work and how I might help make things better.

jacurtis 4y ago

Its sad, but it sounds like you have had bad managers. I myself am a mid-level manager. I have 1x1s with my employees. I also have 1x1 with my manager (the CTO). I personally look forward to my 1x1 with my manager, the CTO, each week. I find them very useful. Without them we always meet in the context of other projects and often around other people. Having dedicated time to talk one-on-one is very nice. I know that my employees enjoy one-on-ones with me, because by default I generally only schedule them biweekly (every-other-week). But many of my employees go over on time each meeting and many of them request meeting weekly. We discuss goals, difficulties, challenges, successes, and often even personal things (only when provoked by the employee, I never ask personal questions or personal topics myself). The 1 on 1 meetings are the best true barometer for how an employee is doing. Some employees might be overwhelmed, but don't show it in other meetings. 1 on 1 meetings give me an idea for how they are truly feeling. I might even invite them for time off (we have unlimited PTO) when hearing things in 1x1s. A bad manager might make 1x1s worthless. If that's the case you should look at other teams or companies. Life is too short to work under bad managers.

zogomoox 4y ago
You make it sound like bad managers are rare. Changing teams or companies does not guarantee finding a good manager.